Gotta love the subscription model, don't buy a BMW with heated seats.
Honestly it's a horrible model for the customer but it's the world we live in now, you don't own anything you are just renting and are responsible for repairs. Sadly HP isn't any different than anybody else, try getting a white paper from Redhat without a subscription, try getting firmware from Dell without a subscription. First we monetized everything and now we are monetizing everything's lifecycle
Don't give in. There are less shitty companies and at least in the tech business there's many of us who have extra money that we can vote with, or can make recommendations to others (don't buy HP, maybe don't buy an inkjet in general).
If HP wants to rent printers to consumers that's fine, but then the transaction should look like a rental and not a sale.
That means:
- If I "buy" it in a store there should be clear signage that it is a rental and that I don't own the hardware. Ideally HP would mail consumers printers.
- there should be a line item on some bill saying "Printer rental" and when the rental concludes, they should send a shipping label to take it back.
- if the printer breaks, they should send a tech out to repair or exchange via mail. Heck the store where I rented it from could be paid by HP to do that.
Yes, this would cost HP money. Yes, HP might have to make hardware that isn't flimsy.
I'm not trying to justify this nonsense I'm just saying it's become a standard business practice and not not being transparent with the customer is also pretty standard business practices. We as consumers need to decide what we are going to do either accept that this is just business as usual or stop supporting companies with questionable business practices our money. Sadly people are way to easily sucked in with prices that are to good to be true and then when they learn the real cost of "ownership" they are shocked, as the saying goes if the deal seems too good to be true than it likely is and a color printer with a built in scanner for $60 falls into that category.
You still own the printer. You can still buy regular ink cartridges and use them however you want.
Instant Ink is an optional program. An optional program that is so grossly misunderstood that it has been a PR disaster since its inception and should really be scrapped.
Honestly it's a horrible model for the customer but it's the world we live in now, you don't own anything you are just renting and are responsible for repairs. Sadly HP isn't any different than anybody else, try getting a white paper from Redhat without a subscription, try getting firmware from Dell without a subscription. First we monetized everything and now we are monetizing everything's lifecycle